Acne vulgaris is a skin disease, of mainly youths, involving comedos, papulae and pustules appearing on the face, the center of the chest or the upper part of the back. Main causes of ache vulgaris include (1) hypersteatosis; (2) stricture of hair-follicles; and (3) proliferation of Propionibacterium acnes, which is one of the gram-positive anaerobic bacteria, in the pilosebaceous gland.
Attempts have been made to treat acne vulgaris by mainly focusing on the removal of the above-mentioned three causes. For example, female hormones are used for suppressing hypersteatosis, keratolytic substances, such as salicylic acid and resorcin, are used to eliminate stricture of hair-follicles, and bactericidal disinfectants, such as chlorohexidine gluconate, are used for inhibiting proliferation of the bacterium.
However, conventionally employed bactericidal disinfectants inherently cause erythema and peeling and thus irritate the skin by, for example, seriously roughening the skin. Therefore, the allowable doses of such bacteriocides are restricted, which makes it difficult to fully obtain their effects.
In recent years, there has been proposed to use various natural substances and synthetic compounds, which have antibacterial activity and safety for the skin, for treating acne vulgaris. For example, it has been proposed to use antibacterial substances originating from natural materials such as ferruginol (JP-A-1-311018; the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"), totarol (JP-A-1-311019), sempervirol (JP-A-1-311020), tetrahydroabietic acid and esters thereof (JP-A-2-188513), and anacardic acid (JP-A-4-36238) for treating ache vulgaris. Further, it has been proposed to use synthetic compounds such as a composition comprising a 4-n-butyl catechol derivative together with a heavy metal [International Patent Laid-Open No. 88/03806 (1988)] and 1-hydroxy-2-pyridone [U.S. Pat. No. 4,762,847 (1988)] as an antibacterial component for treating acne vulgaris.
Among these substances, those originating from natural materials occur in a small amount in nature and, therefore, cannot be fully utilized industrially. On the other hand, the synthetic compounds cannot be easily synthesized. In order to use these synthetic compounds as a drug for treating acne vulgaris, it is needed to add a heavy metal to the drug, which results in some fear for human health and, furthermore, requires care for the environmental pollution upon disposal. Accordingly, these compounds are not satisfactory as an active ingredient of a drug for treating acne vulgaris.
The saturated or unsaturated chain alcohol having 18 carbon atoms represented by formula (1) ##STR2## wherein a dotted line represents either the presence or the absence of a double bond, which is an active ingredient of the topical composition for treating or preventing acne vulgaris according to the present invention, can be easily synthesized from geranyl acetone which has been used as an intermediate for synthesizing drugs. This compound is available at a relatively low cost. Although it has been proposed to use this compound for eliminating harmful aquatics (JP-A-57-128612), it has neither been reported that this compound is effective for inhibiting proliferation of Propionibacterium acnes causing acne vulgaris or killing the bacterium nor that it has an antibacterial activity.
JP-A-3-279318 proposes a topical composition which comprises a drug for treating acne and a surfactant having an aliphatic alcohol residue skeleton containing one or more unsaturated bonds which conceptually involves the compound represented by formula (1). However, the aliphatic alcohols disclosed therein are compounds such as oleyl alcohol and none of the compounds represented by formula (1) used in the present invention is particularly disclosed therein. Namely, the aliphatic alcohols disclosed therein are employed exclusively as a surfactant and there is no description relating to the antibacterial activity of these compounds.
It is also known that farnesol (3,7,11-trimethyldodeca-2,6,10-trien-1-ol) and dehydronerolidol (3,7,11-trimethyldodeca-6,10-dien-1-yn-3-ol), each having a skeleton similar to that of the compound represented by formula (1), can inhibit the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Sarcina lutea, Corynebacterium equi, Mycobacterium avium, Mycobacterium phlei, Nocardia asteroides and Aerobacter aerogenes at a concentration of from 15.6 ppm to 1000 ppm (JP-A-53-91122). Thus it has been proposed to use these compounds as an agricultural/horticultural bactericide (JP-A-56-73002). In particular, it is known that farnesol exhibits a growth inhibitory effect on Staphylococcus epidermidis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Corynebacterium species, Aerobacter kleps and Candida albicans causing the smell of sweat in addition to the bacteria as cited above (JP-A-54-11235 corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,220,665 and British Patent No. 2000030; and JP-A-60-64913 corresponding to EP 126944 and DE 3315058). Thus there have been proposed a deodorant and antibacterial composition to be used in cosmetics or preparations for topical use which comprise farnesol blended with phenyl hydroxyalkyl ether and glycerol monolaurate at a specific ratio (JP-A-64-22815 corresponding to U.S. Pat No. 4,921,694 and EP 297310).
However each of the compounds described in these publications differs from the compound represented by formula (1) used in the present invention in being a primary alcohol, having a triple bond or having a carbon chain of different length. Further, no description relating to the antibacterial activity on Propionibacterium acnes is given in these publications, except that JP-A-64-22815 teaches that farnesol shows little activity when used alone but exhibits an antibacterial activity when used in combination with phenyl hydroxyalkyl ether and glycerol monolaurate.